U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos called to tell me that Rockford finally is getting an assistant U.S. attorney, a need expressed strongly by local criminal justice leaders — the famous 2013 “Crime Summit” that Bustos and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin convened in the Stanley Roszkowski U.S. Courthouse.

Because of a lack of funding, that assistant’s job couldn’t be staffed at the time, said Bustos, D-East Moline.

“I’ve been working for months on this issue,” Bustos said. New Northern District U.S. Attorney Zach Fardon is in office, and Bustos met with him last week.

“The problem has been lack of funds, and we’ve restored some funding. We put in an ‘ask,’ saying a U.S. attorney in Rockford is too high a priority not to fill. They are going to fill the slot.”

Bustos said that applications are being taken and that the appointment is expected to be made in two or three months.

“This came out of the crime summit, where we heard from law enforcement people that in order for them to aggressively go after drug and gun crimes, they needed to have a U.S. attorney.”

Bustos also noted that she and Durbin, D-Springfield, have succeeded in getting funding to open the long-empty prison at Thomson as a federal maximum security facility.

“We’ve gotten $54 million to get the building up to code, and next year we’ll have $170 million to hire people and get it opened,” she said. The prison will hire 1,100 people, and will represent a $200 million yearly impact on the northwest Illinois economy.

Thomson was built as a state prison in 2001. It never opened because of political wrangling. When the federal government bought it in 2009, some Republican members of Congress objected to opening it because they supposedly feared suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison would be sent there. That can’t happen because Congress passed a law against it.

Gov. Pat Quinn has reappointed Rockford’s Doug Scott as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. He was first appointed in 2011, after serving since 2005 as state EPA director.

“Doug Scott has proven himself time and time again as a strong advocate for Illinois’ working families,” Quinn said in a statement. “At the Illinois Commerce Commission, he will continue to fight for Illinois consumers by ensuring strong oversight of utility companies throughout our state.”

During Scott’s tenure, Quinn said, the ICC “has saved Illinois residents $680 million in proposed utility rate increases and in 2013 secured $109 million in consumer refunds from ComEd and Nicor Gas. In addition, it has assisted nearly 60,000 consumers in saving $4.6 million dollars that had been charged due to billing errors, late charges or deposit requirements. The ICC has also protected the environment by ensuring that the state’s renewable portfolio standards are adhered to by its major electric utilities as well as all active Alternative Retail Electric Suppliers.”

Page 2 of 2 - Scott, a Democrat, was mayor of Rockford from 2001 to 2005. He was a state representative from 1995 to 2001.

Scott is the second former Rockford chief executive to chair the ICC. Charles Box also chaired the regulatory body.

Gov. Quinn’s spokeswoman Brooke Anderson wrote in to say that she wasn’t happy about my writing that the governor “will use the full power of incumbency to distribute state grants in key locations around the state to win support.”

Anderson wrote, “I can assure you there is no plan to ‘distribute state grants in key locations to win support’ for election.”

I based my opinion on a day of traveling with the governor in 2010, just before his close re-election. We traveled to Elgin, Aurora and Rockford, where Quinn awarded River’s Edge grants in front of cheering crowds along the Fox and Rock rivers. That was not political, I was told, because I was traveling with the governor, not the candidate.